Qualifying - Mexico GP report: Manor Ferrari

Alexander Rossi will lead the Manor Marussia F1 Team into tomorrow’s Formula 1 Gran Premio de México 2015 after a positive qualifying saw him end the day in 18th position. His team-mate Will Stevens’ session was rather more frustrating, leaving him in P19.

John Booth, Team Principal

“While this has been a rather tricky day for us, with mixed fortunes for both sides of the garage at one point or other, this was in fact our best qualifying performance since Monza. This morning, Will had a reasonable free practice session, to complete 20 laps on a track that has been steadily improving in terms of grip level. On the other side of the garage, Alexander experienced a braking issue and he completed only 8 laps before the problem confined him to the garage while we sought a remedy. This afternoon, Will had the lion’s share of the bad luck. Shortly after leaving the garage for his out lap, he reported a sticking throttle, so with that run aborted he had only one shot at qualifying. Alex had a better time of it this afternoon and completed two solid runs, recovering quickly from this morning’s disappointments. I think we’re all looking forward to the race now; the atmosphere is going to be sensational and I hope we can leave Mexico having met our objective of a two-car finish.”

Alexander Rossi

“It wasn’t the best start to the day, with the braking issues I experienced in FP3, but I’m pretty pleased with the way the team rectified that problem and we were able to give Qualifying all we had. The grip level has improved with each new session, so this morning was frustrating because of the level of evolution I could see was happening. That was valuable preparation time for qualifying, but we don’t seem to have fared so badly, and today was in fact the team’s best qualifying performance since Monza. It was a scrappy lap because of all of that, so there was perhaps some time to be gained, but I’m happy with where I’ll start the race and I’m very excited about racing here tomorrow. It’s a great track and it provides an element of challenge that could benefit us in the same way as Austin; we just need to be prepared.”

Will Stevens

“I went out on my first run and the throttle was sticking, so I had to abort the run. On the way in I was called to the weighbridge, so I ended up only having one run. The combination of the low grip track conditions, and the fact that we haven’t had as much running as we would have liked here, has put us on the back foot, so I’m actually quite happy to be as close as I am to Alex. It’s incredibly frustrating to be honest. That aside, I’m looking forward to the race tomorrow and a good battle with Alex.”